Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/288

 later, a brother virtuoso, who was paying a visit to Tang, saw the tripods and was so enamoured of them that he dreamed of nothing else. Ultimately, after much entreaty, he persuaded Tang to part with Hao's tripod for a sum of fifteen hundred pieces of silver.

This anecdote is interesting, as showing not only the enormous value attaching to specimens of fine and rare porcelain three hundred years ago in China, but also the fact that the soft-paste white Ting-yao was successfully copied at the close of the sixteenth century. Indeed, although there is no direct evidence to that effect, the student may conclude with tolerable confidence that there was produced at Ching-tê-chên throughout the greater part of the Ming dynasty a soft-paste porcelain resembling Sung Ting-yao almost to the point of absolute identity. The one discernible difference is that the Ming keramists did not stove their bowls and cups in an inverted position, as was the practice at the Ting-chou factory. Thus in the older specimens the upper rims are unglazed, which defect is usually hidden by a metal ring. In Japanese collections may be seen not a few choice pieces resembling in all respects the Ting-yao and Shu-fu-yao, but probably produced, for the most part, during the Mzng dynasty.

The true Ting-yao, as already stated, is not crackled. But fine, strongly marked crackle constitutes a principal feature in another variety of soft-paste porcelain dating probably from about the Chêng-hwa era. In thinness and quality of biscuit this ware closely resembles the Ting-yao, but its glaze is more lustrous and distinctly darker in colour. Small bowls of it often have their outer surface fluted so as to resemble the calyx of a flower. Others have floral designs cut in